Friday, May 22, 2009

The background noise

Wayne Allwine, the American actor who was the voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years has died at the age of 62, says this report.

Amazing how someone could have spent his entire career dubbing the voice of a famous cartoon character, while he himself remained forever in the background, unknown and unsung (though not unheard). Playback singers are different. They get their due recognition. The audience knows that the song has not been sung by the actor on the screen.

I have heard that in Germany, where Hollywood films are dubbed in German, there are artists who provide the voice for the entire duration of an actor’s career. An example is that of a Christian Bruckner, who is the German voice of Robert De Niro, and is a household name himself.

Another case I read about was that of Irina von Bent­heim, who provided the voice for Sarah Jessica Parker in the German version of “Sex and the city”. Much after this serial ended, Bentheim continued to, invisibly, hold sway over the listeners, with her voice-over in commercials. People believed that it was actually Parker speaking. A case of a voice outliving the character or the person,

A somewhat similar breed is that of ghostwriters. Imagine living one’s entire life in someone else’s shadow. Not even your voice is heard, though the entire speech may have been written by you, and you are the only person who knows that.

My own blogposts are written by a ghostwriter named Raj and I want to take this opportunity to give him due credit.